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Wooot - thanks a lot to all you upgraders out there.You really managed to get me a lot more work - packing Pandoras like hell (but I like that. I'm happy for every customer who finally receives his unit!).

Over 40 upgrades have already shipped, another 60 or so will follow until the end of the week.
Good thing I'm getting 100 more units this week.

I'm pretty sure the boards will get more lively again once these units all arrive at their destinations.

Also, I've got some more good news for you:

It's finally time for another compo, held by my shop, the DragonBox.
I will post more information and rules as soon as I find some time to write them down, but here are some quick informations upfront:

The compo will end at the end of January. This will give the full christmas holidays time for coding

There will be various categories with prizes (ports, original games, emulators, etc.). So no port has to compete with an emulator or original game.

The system can be ANYTHING open... (Dingoo, Caanoo, Pandora, etc.). However, the sourcecode has to be released at the end - after all, we're promoting OpenHandhelds here. You can still define your own license.

Your entry doesn't have to be something new. It can also be an updated version of something already released. You can also release beta versions for public testing.

Among the prizes will be vouchers for my shop, a Pandora, etc. I'll let you know. If anyone else also want to contribute something, that's possible as well (of course)

Well, that's just a quick info upfront. More soon, but you can already start coding if you like.

What does this have to do with the Pandora, you might ask?
This is an actual picture from the developers running on the Pandora.
It currently runs on Android (as there's no Unity 4 out for Linux ARM), but even without optimizing, it ran really really well already and supports the controls and buttons out of the box (now someone tell me the Pandora is powerless )

That would be an awesome commercial game. An optimized Pandora port (maybe even with proper packaging on SD Card?) will most probably become a stretchgoal.
It might even be that you can get special Days-of-Dawn-Pandoras (airbrushed) for some pledge... but that's something Tassilo has to reply, I'm not sure what his plans are exactly.

I'd be very happy to see this game released - and playing it on the Pandora would be my favourite.

So much for a quick update.
Good times are ahead, with the Amiga Emulator getting better every day, Slackware being an awesome alternative full OS, more users getting their units and some more games and apps as well as a competition.

In 2004, Senile Team released Beats of Rage, a free beat-'em-up for DOS inspired
by SEGA's Streets of Rage series and using sprites from SNK Playmore's King of
Fighters series. The game spread only by word of mouth, but it nonetheless
amassed popularity very quickly. Senile Team soon released an edit pack allowing
anyone interested to create a mod for the BOR engine.
In 2005, Kirby2000 asked Senile Team to open the source code to BOR. They
agreed, and OpenBOR was born. Development on the engine was continued by the
community, and still is to this day.

This was a big job and we are still behind in emails replies, we know this, please don't send multiple emails with the same content, this just makes it worse, also sending random abuse achieves nothing.

Be aware that none of us are paid and we don't even take expenses anymore. We all have other jobs now and this is being done simply to try to clear the orders rather than just declaring defeat after what CirucitCo did.

The good news is almost 150 of you have so far requested to upgrade to the 1Ghz. This is fantastic and I and Ed are processing these orders now, you will get an email about this soon if you have not already, we can ship 400 1Ghz units before Christmas so upgrading is a desirable move right now.

After we have processed these orders there will be a push on 1Ghz units for Christmas sales. We hope these will fund shipping more preorders and give us a viable route to clearing the queue.

Remaining previous 1Ghz orders are shipping next week and the week after, we hope to clear these as soon as possible.

I am desperately trying to catch up with my emails and PMs this week, please be patient.

In case you wondered why I'm currently not often seen in IRC or posting at the boards here... well, I'm currently heavily working on catching up with things. Sorry in case you've been waiting for replies here.

I've sorted out all of my eMails, which took quite a while.
I'm now down to about 150 eMails left to reply to (compared to 1500 last week), the tickets in my shop are being cleared almost daily, PMs are also down to a few single ones, so next will be to catch up with the tickets from the site here and the remaining emails.
That's one huge pile of work removed.

I've also been working on other Pandora related stuff. Replied to some more questions from GC regarding the TV Out Cable (yep, it's still not forgotten), planning the next Pandoras (we'll get quite a lot of them next week, so we're finally back in stock!).

The new TV Out Cables (with the Japanese Material) have arrived as well, which means I'm now starting to repair the units which need a new LCD Cable as well.

This was just a very quick and brief summary of what happened.
Once I've cleared the remaining workpile of mails and requests, I'll be back here and in IRC more regularly again

Wow, you guys actually did it.
Thanks to the donations and many Cross-Upgrades, I am currently out of stock - but fear not, new stock is going to arrive soon.

1. More Pandoraaaaas

Within this week, I will receive more Rebirth-Units. Most of them will go to old preorders right away though, thanks to donations and 1GHz-Sales.
Next week, the regular production of the 1GHz units will restart. Global Components had to buy a steam soldering machine to reliable produce the 1GHz boards. For the ones that have been produced so far they used the machine of a different company. That was only meant as a temporary solution though, until they get their own machine (which has now happened).

All the parts for the next 1000 units are now here, so that out of stock will soon be over

2. Credit Card payment now possible in DragonBox Shop

Finally, credit card payment is enabled in my shop, so any cross-upgrades and other orders in my shop can now be paid using credit cards as well.
Time to get more Pandoras back in stock

3. Pandora classic preorder donations

Preorder donations so far have worked out well. 17 preoders have been financed using those donations - and I've not yet sent an eMail to the Pandora newsletter subscribers (over 20,000 users).
This will happen within the next few days - so let's hope to get a lot of the remaining preorders cleared.

Just a quick information: If we didn't have these preorders left (thanks again to that awesome company in Texas...), we could offer the 1GHz Pandora for less than 450 EUR... which would rock.
So the more donations we get, the more I will be able to lower the price - and that would be great, as I'd love to make the Pandora affordable to everyone who would like one.

I don't think it's realistic we can get ALL remaining preorders donated (that would be 250,000 EUR), but the more we get, the better the price could be sometime in the future.
Every 1 GHz unit sold at the current price will also decrease the preorder queue, as the profit made from those goes into the donation pot as well

Additionally, I will add more items into the shop soon, like signed bare or half-populated PCBs from the first test-run, framed.
The money made from those will also go into the donation queue. So when you order something from my shop, you could grab such a goodie for a good cause.

So yeah, let's shrink this queue That's my main goal, now that the production is running well.

4. LCD Cables

The company that produced the awesome, unbreakable LCD-Cables for us didn't do that good last time... the last batch of cables seem to have some that are failing again, despite being twice as expensive as the ones before.
Luckily, it wasn't that many and I'm not sure all of them are affected.
A german company is currently exactly analyzing them (they analyzed the previous cables as well and told me exactly why they didn't fail), so we'll know for sure what went wrong there and - of course - I'll do anything to get fixed LCD Cables for free from them.

The good news is: The next batch of LCD cables is on the way already, this time done by another company who uses a new material from Japan which has been especially created for such purposes, so they should be even more reliable than the ones that didn't break so far

So no need to have a huge delay here, the solution is already here.

5. eMail Backlog and the ticketing system

The ticket system is setup and working, some community members are already helping out replying to customers here as well.
It will surely take some time to work ourselves into the various requests, but from then on, we'll catch up.
I'm currently sorting all my eMails and moving some of them into the ticket system.

While I am able to keep up with new requests, I don't think I can ever catch up replying all eMails I still got in my queue - and a lot of these are probably obsolete anyways, as some customers with RMAs sent multiple eMails and PMs and the repair has already been done a long time ago...
I will work myself through the mails during the next few days and will send a reply to all older eMails that they should send a new mail (into the ticket system) if their request hasn't been taken care of yet - it's the only way to get the queue down to a manageable level.

So if you're still waiting: Expect that mail soon and use the ticket system for your request.

That's it from me for now - let me know if you have any further questions.
I'll try to reply as soon as possible.

The guys over at Lavalit have released a new version of the beats of rage clone for the Dreamcast, Dingoo, PSP, Linux, Windows, GP2x, Nintendo Wii and Wiz.

OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game engine, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com.

In 2004, Senile Team released Beats of Rage, a free beat-'em-up for DOS inspired
by SEGA's Streets of Rage series and using sprites from SNK Playmore's King of
Fighters series. The game spread only by word of mouth, but it nonetheless
amassed popularity very quickly. Senile Team soon released an edit pack allowing
anyone interested to create a mod for the BOR engine.
In 2005, Kirby2000 asked Senile Team to open the source code to BOR. They
agreed, and OpenBOR was born. Development on the engine was continued by the
community, and still is to this day.

The guys over at Lavalit have released a new version of the beats of rage clone for the Dreamcast, Dingoo, PSP, Linux, Windows, GP2x, Nintendo Wii and Wiz.

OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game engine, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com.

In 2004, Senile Team released Beats of Rage, a free beat-'em-up for DOS inspired
by SEGA's Streets of Rage series and using sprites from SNK Playmore's King of
Fighters series. The game spread only by word of mouth, but it nonetheless
amassed popularity very quickly. Senile Team soon released an edit pack allowing
anyone interested to create a mod for the BOR engine.
In 2005, Kirby2000 asked Senile Team to open the source code to BOR. They
agreed, and OpenBOR was born. Development on the engine was continued by the
community, and still is to this day.

The guys over at Lavalit have released a new version of the beats of rage clone for the Dreamcast, Dingoo, PSP, Linux, Windows, GP2x, Nintendo Wii and Wiz.

OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game engine, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com.

In 2004, Senile Team released Beats of Rage, a free beat-'em-up for DOS inspired
by SEGA's Streets of Rage series and using sprites from SNK Playmore's King of
Fighters series. The game spread only by word of mouth, but it nonetheless
amassed popularity very quickly. Senile Team soon released an edit pack allowing
anyone interested to create a mod for the BOR engine.
In 2005, Kirby2000 asked Senile Team to open the source code to BOR. They
agreed, and OpenBOR was born. Development on the engine was continued by the
community, and still is to this day.

Compared to zx-81's version, it uses slightly different codebase (that has pandora's changes) and may have other bugs, but sound seems to be ok here, at least to me. Savestates might be incompatible with the other version though.

Sorry for the lack of news updates lately - those missing 20K EUR were a bit of a shock to me, as I was really awaiting that money to keep production going.
It was a bit demotivating and combined with too much work, I was a bit burnt out... and also had to do a lot of reorganization to make sure everything will continue as planned.
I just couldn't motivate myself to reply to any mails, but hopefully will continue to do so this week, as I'm recovering right now.

Okay, let's get back to the situation and what my thoughts are:
Right now, I've got about 60 more 1GHz units in stock - that's it until the new parts arrive (which should be in about two weeks).
Then the production will continue. We have parts for the next 1000 Pandoras then, that should be enough for a while

First off, some facts:

Production is running fine now, even for the 1GHz units. Once we got the parts, we can theoretically produce 250 per week.

Every order placed at my shop (www.dragonbox.de) will ship out RIGHT AWAY, also the 1GHz units!
Only 1GHz orders from Craigs shop (OpenPandora Ltd., UK) have a backlog right now - and I'll do anything to help to clear this backlog.
So no worries - if you want a 1GHz unit NOW, you can order and get it!

My shop is not broke, nor have I run out of funds. Nothing to worry here, production will continue as planned.

Okay, now here are some thoughts I had.

The most important thing is that we increase the sales of the Pandora - as these sales fund the remaining preorders and therefore also ensure the future of the Pandora.
There are various ways of increasing the sales...

1. Get new customers!

The Pandora right now is a bit pricey - but there are probably a lot more interested customers out there who have the money and would like to buy it and support the idea of a niche device.
However, right now, every customer has to KNOW about the Pandora in order to buy it. Therefore, without news on websites (like the one at Eurogamer), we won't get new customers.
We need to increase the Google Rankings for more common keywords (like Emulator, Playstation, etc.) so that we also get customers NOT searching specifically for the Pandora.
Luckily, I've got an online marketing expert in my company who knows how to improve these rankings - and we want to do that with new videos.

I'm already working on new videos - and you can help me, if you want...
... providing me videos recorded from TV Out.
... by letting me know which games or emulated games would be great to show.
... by providing me with the most important keywords that we need for the Pandora.

These Videos will surely help get some more interest - and sell more units. More sold units mean a faster clearing of all remaining queues.

2. Get additional funds

I've seen the idea of a donation fund on the other thread - and the idea is great. Right now, we've got 22,000 users who subscribed to the Pandora newsletter. While not all of them are probably still interested in the Pandora, if every single one of them donated only 8 EUR, I could immediately produce and ship out ALL preorders!
Of course, not everyone will donate - but every EUR is helping, so there might be some who'll help us out. Maybe I can even find some bigger supporters - I don't think so, but it sure is worth trying.

If YOU want to support classic preorders, check out this donation website
I WILL let you know over time how many units I was able to sponsor.

And I will use that money to also fund Craigs 1GHz queue as well as both classic preorder queues.

3. Cross-Upgrade your preorder to an instant-delivery 1GHz Pandora!

So you ordered a classic Pandora from Craig, have some more money ready and would gladly pay for an update to a 1GHz unit which will be delivered right away?
That's possible now! All you need to know is your order number and head over to my shop.

As long as there are units in stock, you can upgrade it and get it right away - promised

4. Lower the price

While many of you here agree that the Pandora is worth its price, it's still a bit high for a lot of interested users.
I'd like everyone to be able to afford the Pandora - however, right now we urgently need the money to be able to also fund old preorders, so I can't really lower the price until we have all preorders cleared.
When we've got all preorders delivered, a lower price should be possible - and attract more customers.

So the faster we can get the above things going, the better for EVERYONE in the community!

Okay, and here is my call for help!

While I'm working hard to keep everything going, I am only one person and have my limits.
We're a community - and we probably have a lot of talented members here. So if you'd like to help us out, it would be awesome.

As mentioned above, I could really help with doing more videos.
Some advertising (Banner, Flyer, etc.) would also help. Are there any graphic designers here that could create these?
I will provide you with everything you need.
Maybe some of you know some blogs, magazines, websites we should approach for a Pandora Review?
Could it be that anyone here knows someone who has a lot of money and tends to support small projects like this one? Please let me know - and I'll approach him.

And as you know, I'm way behind with my emails... I will set up a ticket system soon, and there should also be a section where community members could help out answering these questions.
Interested in helping out here? Let me know.

As a start I've built six 600mhz units in the silver cases, they have the new nubs, new LCD cable etc.

Fully working, ready to go.

$299 each. PM me.

Many of you are offering to upgrade to the 1Ghz to try to help. This will help get things moving again, and will keep it moving until we get our tax back on those 100 units, at which point things should be back in gear.

Now, the obligatory FAQ to try to stop the same (unhelpful) things being said time and time again:

Q) Why did you refund those orders for big money?

A) Because we are required to by law. It was either potential court action or refund. Court action could freeze and liquidate the company very quickly, there have been bizarre situations where companies have been made bankrupt over £100 debts by just ignoring them.

Q) But why didn't you negotiate with them to try to stop them happening?

A) We did to an extent, but if someone wants their money, you have to give it back to them. In some cases we have negotiated with people for months before they threaten us with legal action. It's not nice to end up in that situation, and I don't think it leaves a very good impression. If we had just refunded right away they might have come back one day, but now they won't.

Q) What now?

Right, I'l like to go ahead with the planned 1Ghz publicity we have prepared. From these sales we will do a 1 for 1. Each unit sold will cover a preorder.

But remember, there will still be cancelled orders, returned units and issues while doing all this.

But that promotion should clear the 1Ghz backlog.

Then we're back to clearing original orders.

That's it, simple as that.

Then, next month we get the tax refund and we have a buffer zone once more.

That's all we can offer right now, let me know if you think we should do something else.

Sorry for this late post, I've promised to give the iCP2 KS 110% so the following events took place at exactly the wrong time.

Anyhow, to summarise the situation (this is relating to OP UK):

A couple of months ago Ed agreed that we should move to 1Ghz production and most of my outstanding preorders could all be 1ghz boards, this lead to a simple and perfect equation, 1 for 1. Ie sell one 1Ghz unit and we can ship 1 old preorder and 1 new 1Ghz unit.

This was actually working really well, we managed to clear some debts and ship about 100 units quickly, but then we had some large preorders cancelled unexpectedly. The people who cancelled these were not being nasty or awkward, they just needed the money back and I can understand this in the current climate. It amounted to ~100 units.

They had to be refunded, and it had to happen at just the wrong time.

Fortunately we are able to claim back quite a lot of tax on those refunds, about $15,000-$20k.

That will recover the situation somewhat, but we have to be very careful, it's unfortunate this has happened when we're so close to clearing the preorders, but nothing is ever easy is it?

The tax refund won't be with us until next month. Until that time orders will continue to ship but slowly as we very very carefully recover, we have a lot of 600Mhz units to sell, which I'll put up at the 'classic' price to keep things going, paying the bills etc.

At the same time Eds sales have been slower than expected, so no free units are currently available.

I hope you can help us though this, we are frustratingly close to clearing the old original orders (we need to sell about 400 more units to do it).

Don't worry - there is a plan to solve all this which I and Ed are nailing out, I'd wanted to wait until it was a clear and detailed plan but a lot of you are wanting information now, and while the above might be worrying, please don't go off on crazy tangents until the solution is detailed.

The Pandora was billed to be the PSP Killer and to be honest it is an awesome console, the console looks like a DS but with larger screen and with a keyboard and was extremely powerful.

The only downer was the continous problems they endured, theres been a mass of software released for it but ultimately hasnt lived up to what was expected

Saying that we have a site with all the news on here --> http://pandora.dcemu.co.uk/ (shares the news feed with gp2x, dingoo, wiz and caanoo)

Sadly never got my hands on one despite posting the news to all the worlds major sites which helped get the preorders they needed. So apart from reading others viewpoints ive never been able to be truely amazed by what i posted at one time has the PSP Killer.

My final auction of today is a Boxed GP32 BLU that was working great, but for whatever reason when i turn it on now it has a red light and a blank screen, on investigation it looks like it needs to be jtagged. As that is way beyond my skill level it has also gone on Ebay for Sale.

Hi everyone i am having a clearout of games consoles that due to time issues i never play anymore and would rather they go to a new home, i have a Dingoo A320 with a 2GB Mini SD Card with Dingux Installed and a ton of emulators and homebrew games installed on it.

Hi all, anyone who hasnt already got a GP2X could pick up a bargain as i am selling a GP2X with 8GB SDHC Card and the official GP2X Case and also a TV Out Cable and a Power supply on Ebay in an auction starting at 99p (UK Shipping only)

Hiya and sorry again for the long overdue newspost.
As you probably know, I came back from the GamesCom last Sunday and haven't had a day off since sometimes before the GamesCom... and it seems I catched a light flu, so I'm a bit exhausted.
Nevertheless, things are moving and that's why I'm posting here

1. 1GHz units

I should've gotten the remaining 1GHz units this week - however, some bad incidence happened.
One of the machine operators working at Global Components had to go to the hospital Tuesday evening, as he was spitting blood... seems like some stomach bleedings.
The hospital is currently analyzing what it caused. Thank god it doesn't seem to be something major, as he's home already to relax a bit (they didn't keep him at the hospital).
As it's holiday season, the other two are on holidays right now... one of them far away. The other one helped out for a few hours, but most of the time, the machine stood still.
It looks like they're going full steam ahead again from Monday on, so we should hopefully see these units next week and be able to sell them from stock soon after.
All the best wishes to the Operator. GC has a really awesome team and I personally hope it's nothing serious.

They'll be coming for sure, as all issues have been resolved and they can now produce the 1GHz Pandoras without any issues.

2. Classic Units

Askarus has been here for the full week and has been testing classic (CC) PCBs, sorting them out.
We're getting preassembled (silver) cases next week from GC and will then put the Pandoras in our shop.
A lot of them can be fixed and will be fully working, though some have minor issues like non-working WiFi or USB.
We'll probably sell the fully working ones (in brand new cases) for about 250 - 300 EUR, the ones with smaller issues for an even lower price (price will depend on what's broken).
I'll also put the Shirts online soon.
So I'll have different units to offer next week with different price ranges. Should be a good thing for everyone

3. Repairs.

Askarus will also be here next week and work on the repairs I got here, so if you are waiting for your Pandora to be repaired, it should happen next week as well.
Thanks a lot to Askarus for the help

4. TV Out Cables

Link was nice enough to send me his cable and I gave it to GC.
They are now checking how much it would cost to produce this. They'll probably solder them manually (which is a fast thing with the TinyBob), as any other company has a minimum order quantity of at least 5000 - and they all have a leadtime of 14 weeks... soldering them manually here at GC will be faster and we won't have to take huge quantities.

As you can see, a lot of things are happening - the only downside right now is the slight delay with the 1GHz units, but it's no technical issue but a health issue. And health certainly is more important than a few days lost in PCB production.

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